


Priceless

by ruff_ethereal



Series: Two To Get In Trouble [1]
Category: Descendants (2015)
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Pregnancy, Prostitution, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:26:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruff_ethereal/pseuds/ruff_ethereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale about a woman who found herself falling for a not-quite-handsome but charming man who owned a junk shop, and the child she bore from that night of passion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Priceless

“What are you doing out here?” Jafar said as he leaned out the side door of his home. “Come in, come in! Treasures don't belong out in the cold and filthy streets, they belong inside my shop!”

She looked at him and laughed. She had been the recipient of so many comments, so much attempts at humour, and so much more ill-intentioned jabs made at her expense, but this was the first one that had gotten her to genuinely smile.

Back then, Jafar had already lost quite a bit of the tall, imposing presence he was infamous for, his beard scraggly and unkempt, his hair left to grow wild and hopefully contained under his turban, and his menacing, slender form already showing signs of a gut.

But, he was still a skilled orator, a charmer with a silver tongue but a heart of black, a man who could easily talk his way into a woman's patched-up harem pants with the aid of a little food and some drink.

She'd left as soon as he was laying on his cot spent, satisfied, and deep in slumber. She'd dirtied some of his cloths and used up some of his drinking water to clean herself up, but as a sign of respect and for the way she made her genuinely shiver and giggle at his words, she didn't take anything from him.

Afterward, she never plied her trade near Jafar's Junk Shop ever again—she couldn't bear with the thought of him regularly wiling her into his home for another night of passion and of lost opportunities to make much needed money.

Unlike so many of the girls that also plied her trade, she did not entertain any illicit and ultimately doomed affairs, she was not new to the business, nor did she harbor any of the popular dreams of some relatively rich client falling in love with her and whisking her away to a better life. Before the Banishment, she had been a harem girl, born beautiful, grown up to be positively irresistible, then sold off, perfumed and draped in silks, and trained in the art of answering to every last whim and desire of men whose only positive trait was the amount of gold and riches they had on them.

She'd worked, wiled, and charmed her way out of that life and went on her own after a year or so—though the money and the luxuries weren't quite as nice, she found that the guards and the richer men of Agrabah tended to make _some_ effort in being presentable and not being _completely_ repulsive.

Being shuffled off to the Isle of the Lost had been a great blow to her work and her lifestyle—the men couldn't quite keep their money for long enough, purses ample by the time they set into the street and with only the shirt on their back three steps afterward; the luxuries of the Isle were much more expensive for much less quality, variety, and consistency; and baths had all but become one of those luxuries that many chose to forgo.

She didn't worry—she was beautiful, she was experienced, she was skilled. She was certain that she could ply her trade for as long as her youth lasted and quite a number of years after that, never quite living the comfortable life on silken sheets as she knew before, but always able to go to sleep someplace warm with a full stomach, _without_ subjecting herself to _too_ many degradations.

And then one day she found the Isle's food even more repulsive than usual, constantly retching valuable meals while her belly grew fuller and rounder, and everything changed.

In the beginning, she had panicked. She had worried about the future—how would she make her living now? Would this child completely ruin her body and her life? How was she going to take care of them?

She had thought up of desperate measures—perhaps raise her prices and cater to _that_ particularly depraved crowd? Return to Jafar, and hope that he would somehow have mercy and compassion for a woman he had had a one night stand with? Make quite a sum and engage in trade between some enterprising sailors and some desperate, childless couples in Auradon?

With the last thought, she felt herself shuddering violently in revulsion and her empty stomach threatening to hurl whatever it could out her lips once more. She resolved to find a way to raise this child without lowering herself to such depths—even the fact that she herself had not an inkling as to how she would go about doing that didn't stop her.

It wasn't easy—oh, of that, there was no doubt—only a question of _how_ difficult it was going to be.

She starved. She suffered, from being unable to work for a living, tortured by the strangest of cravings, her stomach's frequent desire for food and emptying itself of what scraps she could get in equal measure, the even more frequent, unmentionable problems elsewhere, and load the child was making on her own body with her belly growing to incredibly size as the months passed.

If there was one thing she could be certain on, it was that this child wasn't about to make things any easier on her.

There were many nights when she cursed the child. They were many more nights when she cursed King Beast—it wasn't enough to treat them like prisoners, trap them on this hell hole, he had to make sure that it would be miserable and horrible for their children and the mothers, too. And there was never a night when she didn't curse herself for being so vulnerable, for letting herself be wiled and charmed by a not-quite-handsome man with a way with words, and be saddled with his child, with him not knowing about it, to boot.

Still, she hadn't lived this long, lived the life she did then, or never had a hungry night before she was with child if she wasn't anything less than resourceful, clever, and above all, _determined._

By the mercy of fate, she found a man who was not above taking her in so long as she did her fair share of work and she never took more generosity and kindness than he was willing to give; he rarely smiled and looked like he'd kick her back out on the street at any moment, but never actually did—she sometimes thought he enjoyed her company. She plied a new craft: making and dealing shiny baubles and trinkets using strong glue, bandaged hands, and bits of broken glass to make faux jewelry like the ones that used to adorn her body. Unlike so many of the other girls who had practically made it almost their entire lives outside of (and sometimes even while) working, she stopped blaming, complaining, and regretting, and just started _doing_.

Then the child was born, and everything changed once more.

In spite of the scarcity and starvation that had defined her pregnancy, he was born huge, and about as healthy as he could get given the conditions. He was energetic, he was rambunctious, and if the way it was so difficult to steal any trinket back from him was an indicator, he would grow up to be quite strong and determined indeed. He had his father's everything: his skin, his eyes, his face, a stark reminder of who exactly had helped make him, who had made her suffer so much these past months, who she had not even a full night of passion to weigh against all that agony.

She loved him. She loved him as dearly as the parents of Auradon did their children. She loved him no matter how much he forced her to starve herself to feed him, she loved him no matter how difficult it made her life to arrange for his care while she worked, she loved him no matter how much his cries, his playing with and breaking valuables, and his other troubles disrupted her sleep and all her waking hours.

He quickly grew into a very big boy indeed, and had more than enough appetite to match—even close to that of Gaston, and his two ravenous and raucous sons. She quickly had to go back to her old trade just to feed him, but even that proved difficult and almost impossible as she found herself constantly plagued by worries for him, if he was safe in the old man's care, if he wouldn't up and decide her son wasn't worth all the trouble and sold him off, if some other terrible fate weren't going to befall him while she was powerless to protect him. She quickly became broke and beyond that, unable to feed herself, and holding a constantly hungry, crying child at night, willing that her arms and her love could somehow fill the emptiness in both their stomachs.

She quickly realized that there was but one good thing she could do for him: let him go.

The thought of it tore her apart inside. The thought of it made her clutch him close to her chest, as if she would never, ever let him go. The thought of it made her promise to herself that she would find another way like she had, that she would become the parent he needed, no matter how unlikely to downright impossible that was.

She thought of who might be a good parent to him, one who would care for her son, instead of using him as a tool, a means to an end, a commodity to be traded. And no matter how hard she thought, no matter how hard she tried to reason herself away from the decision, no matter how hard she denied it, there was but one person on the entire island who fit the bill:

Jafar.

She brought him in a basket in the middle of the night. She left him on that same side door that she had entered and exited through so long ago, knocked on the rotten wood, and quickly fled to safety. She watched, hiding and waiting, making sure that her son would make it into his father's arms rather than the grubby hands of some opportunistic thief.

The door opened, Jafar peeked out, looking much worse since she last remembered him with a scowl on his face that made him even less attractive. Then, his eyes were brought down to the basket by the noisy gurgling of the child, and his face suddenly lit up with happiness and a genuine smile as he picked up the boy and started cooing over him.

She left a note on the basket. It wasn't to tell her who she was. It wasn't an explanation of her story, of why she had chosen to give him his son after so many years, of all the hardships she had gone through. It was only a single word:

Jay

It was her son's name, given to him in memory of the beautiful birds she had seen when the sultan or a rich man decided to let the public see inside their palaces and zoos, of their raucous noise and life, of the swiftness and grace they flew about their cages and the trees in their miniature oases.

She left as soon as the door closed, and never went to Jafar's junk shop ever again, or even the general area. She found it too painful to imagine what would happen if ever she were to see her beautiful little boy strolling by, what she would do, what she would say, what would happen if she were to show such signs of weakness to the many predators lurking and waiting for just that.

The years passed, and she found herself quitting her old trade. Though she remained beautiful, she never could quite be so beautiful as to make a man choose to exchange his dinner to sate a different kind of hunger. That being said, her clientele had shrunk dramatically when the aching of empty stomachs took precedence over other primal desires as the years passed; to regularly use the second-hand and leftover cosmetics coming in from Auradon would have left her starving to death, a beautiful corpse with the second-to-the-latest-and-hottest look of the season; and she _really_ rather didn't want to risk being laden with yet another child she would have to let go.

She liked to imagine that her son's life had become as good as it could get on the Isle. She dreamed of Jafar treating Jay like a prince, lavishing him with as much love, attention, and riches as he could afford with the inevitably meager and frequently stolen profits of his shop. She dreamed of him toddling about the shelves and the bins, curious and eager to explore, picking up items at random, examining them, before he stuck parts of them into his mouth before his father noticed and took it away from him—or sometimes, let him keep it just because he was just too cute. She dreamed of him calling out to passersby, standing on the front counter, smiling and beaming and charming all who passed by, along with keeping a wary eye on the money box he guarded.

Then one day, she noticed that the most impressive piece from her display—and the item that tonight's dinner had been hinging on—had suddenly disappeared while she wasn't looking.

She frantically looked around until a gleam caught her eye—the barest hint of a finely crafted piece of coloured glass and metal sticking out of a back pocket. Though she couldn't see the thief's face, she need only see the long locks of luxurious brown hair falling around his head like a curtain to know who he was.

She dreamed of taking him back from Jafar, weaning him from using his no doubt deft and strong hands to steal, and instead use them to create, mother and son hawking and peddling gleaming (if not particularly precious) treasures to those that hopefully had money to spare than empty pockets to fill.

Then she woke up, found her stores of money and food had been lightened in her sleep, and once more realized that that would forever stay a dream.

… Until one day, an announcement rang out throughout the Isle of the Lost, and the residents found themselves willfully tuning into the Auradon News Network: as part of King Ben's gradual granting of amnesty and mercy to the some of the villains, all their descendants, and their minions, free coverage and a limited amount of seats to the annual Auradon Tourney School League Cup were to be given out to them. Though it was mostly a random draw for the sake of fairness, his highness mentioned that the seats would also be given to those that sent them a letter and gave him a _very_ good reason to give them one of those precious tickets.

“And for those of you that do end up getting super lucky watching the games from the bleachers, I and two of my good friends and teammates—Jay and Carlos—will personally greet you and show you to your seats!”

Buying a pen that worked was incredibly difficult, not to mention costly. Paper that wasn't filthy or so flimsy it'd start tearing as soon as she wrote on it the same. By the grace of his highness Benjamin, postage was free, as was the envelope.

She slept that night with an empty stomach. It was a restful, happy sleep nonetheless, filled with dreams of watching her watching her son walk up to her, proud, glorious, and handsome in his Tourney uniform, and putting around his neck a necklace adorned with a piece of glue, glass, and metal she had crafted just for the occasion, one shaped after a very specific type of bird.


End file.
